A brief note: this short piece stemmed from a series of comments I made on
a YouTube video that suggested ontology and evolution are a single field, and therefore
that the lack of understanding in the former means the latter is a
pseudoscience and therefore that God exists and I’m going to burn in hell.
Evolution, at its simplest, is change over time. It necessarily begins with a substrate for
change (e.g. non-living organic matter at the very beginning). However, the
origin of this matter is not part of the theory; that is a separate, but
related, field of study, with its own hypotheses.
We do not have a good understanding of the origins of
life. A lot has happened in 4-5 billion years, and there is very little
evidence left to hint at what occurred. We have interesting hypotheses, built
from what circumstantial evidence can be gathered (largely from the extreme
situations we see at present, like life at thermal vents). But, because they
are largely
extrapolated, these hypotheses are difficult to refute and so have not become
theories – it is the failure to realise the potential to refute a hypothesis
that allows it to become a theory.
Compare
evolution. The change in gene identity over time is demonstrable, for example
in generations of laboratory animals. Given a large enough longitudinal study,
it is feasible we could see changes in gene identity over time in humans. The
fossil record shows the gradual accumulation of changes over time in the
physiology of organisms – the evolution of modern horses is a particularly good
example among many. Genetic relatedness between organisms correlates with
physiological and behavioural similarities.
Evolution and
ontology should be considered separately; they address different questions and
the evidential basis for the former is much greater than for the latter.
As a final
point, the cosmology argument is, once again, separate. Cosmology does not lie
within the field of biology, but the processes that occur mirror those of
biology. Evolution is not limited to the change in biological material over
time; anything can evolve over time. In fact, one could say that anything
(acted upon by a force of any description) must evolve over time,
biological or not. Therefore, there are ontological and evolutionary aspects to
a great many things, including biology and cosmology; in all instances,
evolution builds off ontology for the its initial substrate, but the process of
evolution can be investigated and understood without any knowledge of how the
original substrate came to be.
